Pootler

There are two pages here: 'The Routes’ is a list of the bike rides and explains how to use them.  ‘Other Stuff’  contains background notes on the landscape and history of the area as a whole.  This avoids my having to repeat the story in every set of route notes. My gallimaufry of irreverent irrelevancies on a wider range of topics can now be found here  at www.oildrumlane.co.uk. NB>  These pages and routes are now seldom updated, simply because I am fed up with the enshittification of the various apps and the slop they are lathered with.   The dictionary defines 'pootle’ as 'to move somewhere slowly and with no real purpose. This website is home to a collection of bike routes created with an eye for scenery, variety, interest and amusement, aimed at my fellow pootlers and slow cyclists. Most are 30- 40 miles long and either circular or start and finish on the same railway line out of a North London terminal. There are a few longer ri...

NB. This review is now several years old, and is now only updated to add or delete salient detail. The detail on the apps themselves is never updated.  I have also stopped creating new routes. The amount of effort required to write and edit the kind of historical and landscape detail that I like, is increasingly unrewarded in the profile accorded to them by the apps. They are now more nakedly commercial and heavily focused on algorithmically generated junk and the effluent of 'community' uploads. But I do accept that I am an old fogey, that some of my gripes have been addressed and some features  that I regarded as superfluous irritants, are now widely accepted and used. For years, I used the excellent 'Viewranger' app for maps, but this was swallowed up years ago in a scaling-up exercise by Outdooractive, a German company.  I applied four main criteria in searching for a replacement app. Ideally, it should: Give you good quality maps, preferably usable offline,  Al...

Link to the GPX File   Nasty, Romans & Vogons Why the comma in the title of this ride? Think 'Have you eaten Grandma'? The route starts from Knebworth Station and then runs clockwise to the east of Stevenage, on quiet, gently undulating roads around the East Hertfordshire Plateau. (You could as easily start from Stevenage, if you don’t mind the town traffic!). It crosses the River Rib and (Roman) Ermine Street at Buntingford and beyond that follows the River Quin south to Braughing, before turning West to return to Knebworth via Stapleford. The varied landscape is a microcosm of the changes in the agricultural and village landscape since Medieval times. Zooming In Highlights are: The post mill in Cromer. You won’t see many of those! Locations used in the 2005 film of 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent's house and the local pub, where he is drinking when the planet is blown up. A hamlet named 'Nasty'. You c...

  Link to GPX File of the Route   NB. The bridge at Temple Lock on this route has been closed (Sept '24). I will add an amendment to the route a.s.a.p. This route covers two landscapes, the Thames Valley and the Chiltern Hills. From Twyford Station, you head east across flat arable land before turning north and crossing the higher ground bordering the current course of the river. Descending, you cross the river at a lock, then climb around 100m to the wooded hills overlooking the beautiful valley of the Hamble Brook. After following this for a few miles, you coast down the hillside side and then along the valley road to Hambleden itself before recrossing the Thames at the eponymous lock. Leaving the south bank, you cross the valley side again before returning to Twyford. For the most part the route follows minor roads, but there is an avoidable stretch of about a mile of woodland path south of the Thames on the return leg. See ‘Route Tips’ below. The River is crossed at pi...

  GPX File of the Route   Midsomer & Medieval Murders This route uses minor roads and the Phoenix Trail to explore the Aylesbury Vale and some attractive old villages which were used as settings for the documentary series ‘Midsomer Murders’. It starts at Princes Risborough Railway Station. The initial 3 mile stretch to Chinnor is on a well used B Road and then turns north then west to continue towards Ewelme on quieter back roads. At Ewelme it pivots back to head for Thame on a more northerly route, passing through Chalgrove and the Haseleys before crossing the River Thame at Shabbington. From Thame it returns to Prices Risborough on the Phoenix Trail, a converted railway line.  There are some homeopathic climbs, the highest point being just 124m (near  Postcombe) and the lowest is around 40m. For more detail see the Route Tips. Zooming In Highlights are:   The ‘Midsomer Murders’ Villages. Almost every village here claims to have appeared in in ...